Tendenci 5.x or earlier clients should upgrade to Tendenci 7+ now.

Why? What is driving this notice?

Primarily as a safety precaution even if there are no known issues at this time because Django has declared EOL for Django 1.49 which is behind Tendenci 5. (Note: Tendenci 7 uses Django 1.8+ and is not impacted.)

What happens if we don’t upgrade to a newer version of Tendenci?

First – it’s in your best interest because of changes in search engine technology and user’s browsing behavior. But…

In the short term, probably nothing will happen as there are no known issues that I am aware of as I type this. But if the community is not maintaining Django 1.49 then that means nobody is watching on a daily basis and opens the door to possible security issues being undiscovered.

Is there a cost to upgrade from Tendenci 5 to Tendenci 7? Yes.

Earlier this year google changed it’s ranking system to strongly favor mobile web sites. As a result Tendenci 6 and Tendenci 7 use a significantly different template theming based on Bootstrap 3. In the industry this was referred to as “Google’s Mobilegedon”

Is there a cost to upgrade from Tendenci 6 to 7?

No. There is no cost to upgrade from T6 to T7.

It is redoing the layouts to be mobile responsive that causes the need for human intervention to do the upgrades from T5. And this was driven by google and by you, the user, who now browses the web more on their mobile device than their computer.

The good news is we expect future upgrades to be less painful now that we are bootstrap3+ and mobile compatible. Which is why the T6 to T7 upgrade is free for our hosted clients.

We can’t guarantee that all future upgrades after T7 will be free because you never know what Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Samsung are going to do. But we are doing our best to help you control costs and stay safe on this whole crazy Internet thing.

We’ve had a lot of crucial conversations lately about decisions that we made between 2006 and 2010. Yup, really. We are explaining now about how we are possibly too far ahead of the curve and why if you give it a bit of time, it will make you look like a rock-star.

MobileGeddon being a great example of how our early adopters are benefiting the absolute most!

We started using Python, the programming language named after Monty Python, in 2004 if not earlier. We first tested Pinax in 2008 if not earlier under J who was running our programming team.

We used Python extensively in our old environment to move files and push out content to our sites. Tasks that are now done by Puppet and Chef and Docker-Compose. We rolled our own using Python on Windows.

So for the curious, that explains why we have this huge depth of knowledge on Python programming dating back to when nobody heard of it. We’ve had to train numerous graduates of Tech, UofH, Aggies, Rice, Penn State, etc, what Python even was!

But that is all ancient history. Why? Because Python is now number 1!

It’s hard to predict the future. We started out writing our own compete web framework in ASP. We were too early in 2001. PHP soon arrived and, being basically identical but open source, the outcome was PHP won. It should have, and did, win. We were too early. But with timing there is also a bit of luck.

I’ll do another post about GIS and mapping and why our move to strictly Postgres with GIS enabled is working out so well. Another post. And I’ll edit this one with links soon. Just needed to get the content out.

Bootstrap3. – Because we know that we take gambles on technology and they have an impact. On you. And that is serious business. We take it seriously as evidenced by our decision to shut down Windows in line with Microsoft’s EOL policies. These are hard choices. Crucial Conversations. We’re the messenger.

And we CARE about YOU. Our clients. The future is bright. We picked our technology future amazingly well. Too well, so now perhaps our problems is more one of resources. And we’ll work through that.

Thank you. If I can leave you with one thought – it is this. THANK YOU! For those who stuck with us, WOW, um… our position for search and the future is crazy good. Open Source means freedom. Results mean donations and sales. Software means sustainable business models.

We appreciate you. Yes closure for some was hard. We wish you the best. We appreciated your time with us while it lasted longer than a Honda. As some depart and some charge forward, I’m especially excited about those who chose to charge forward.

We, you and us, we didn’t “guess” right. We did our homework and validation came ironically on April 21, the same day mobilegeddon hit and our Tendenci 6 clients jumped up in the search rankings. Luck? Hard work? I don’t know.